I’m the guy who makes jokes. It’s a facade, a survival mechanism I use to keep me going because I don’t trust people with who I am inside. I used to trust people. I remember trusting my mum before she abused me. I trusted my brothers, until they would strangle me, throw darts at me and cut me until I needed stitches. It’s funny, I don’t even know anyone here and I still can’t speak on the extent of what’s happened to me. It was so normal to be tortured while growing up. It was all I knew…
One day I met a girl. She was amazing. I finally found someone that I could trust. I jumped headfirst, my facade finally stripped away. I would always say to her “remember to smile”. I remember one night, she made a sauce out of cherry tomatoes and spices. It was incredible. There was some left over and I joked to her that I would leave it in my fridge until she came back to throw it out. It turns out that her facade was better than mine. Everything she told me was a lie and it broke me when I didn’t think that I could break any more than I already had. I said horrible things and then a week later we talked on the phone. For four hours we remembered to smile and then there was silence. She died on the phone. I called my dad and he broke his hip trying to answer the phone. He was in critical care for months and can never walk again. Seriously, don’t get on the phone with me! (the humour I was speaking of). She had written “remember to smile” on her mirror and it became her quote that they used at her funeral. This is going to sound stupid but I couldn’t throw out that sauce. It stayed in my fridge for over a year until I dug a hole in my backyard, buried the sauce and built a memorial around it…
I cry every night and I’m lucky to sleep an hour or two. And when I fall asleep, my nightmares consume me and sometimes I wake up screaming. My heart physically aches every second of every day. I make jokes so that I can make people smile the way I wish I could, yet no matter how much I try to remember, I’ve forgotten how to smile. And this is where my story ends. I’m just a guy, making jokes, writing poetry and secretly breaking down.
2 comments
This story is beautiful.
Thank you. You are welcome to tell me your story